Question closures under PHP tag and and thin pretexts

Question

Recently a question has been closed, with a reason "Code not implemented or not working as intended". However,

• the code (however as silly as it is) is fully implemented and working
• the OP asked several specific questions on the matters that concern them most, that are fully in the scope of this site
• only one of these questions involves an "undesired behavior", in connection with the previously expressed concern about security, so the OP is not certain about that, hence asking the guidance.

This very last sentence has been carefully nitpicked from the question and used as a pretext for the closure. This is a hair splitting to the extent of mockery.

I wouldn't be much concerned if not the overall community response that seems to support the closure, either with commenting and voting. And it is not the first time I see such an attitude. It frightens me. Do I fatally misinterpret the guidelines of this site? If so, please kindly explain.

Answer 1

I've closed the question again. There is no way that the DBConnect object could possibly be useful, when the connect() method does not return anything, and when it only uses local variables (and keeps no state in instance variables).

I conclude that this is either pseudocode or a very sketchy excerpt. Either way, it's not reviewable, as of Rev 2.

Answer 2

Following the editing-out of the last sentence (which I've approved), I've reopened the question.

OP is clearly interested in improving their code, and barring that last sentence the post in on-topic, and the edit does not warp the OP's intent.

I've approved an edit that makes your question perfectly fine. If you want to ask specifically why it's echoing and how to avoid that, feel free to ask that specific question on Stack Overflow. – Mathieu Guindon♦ just now

That said I don't agree with the assessment of incomptence and intentions-interpreting going on here. Often a first-time poster will present code for illustrative purposes only to depict the specific problem they're asking about, and aren't really interested in a review or in improving their code. If all they wanted was an answer to the echoing question, then no edit could have salvaged it: it's indeed usually better to let the OP fix their question themselves, with proper guidance in the comments.

I do agree that sometimes questions are being closed in accordance with the site rules, but on the basis of an OP that is new to this community and doesn't necessarily know what they can and what they can't (shouldn't, anyway) ask in the body of their post. I draw the line at the OP's apparent intent: if they are interested in a peer review, and happened to slip an off-topic request in their post, the question can be saved. This isn't necessarily obvious, or easy, and nobody gets it right every single time.

Answer 3

The reason it was closed was:

Code not implemented or not working as intended: Code Review is a community where programmers peer-review your working code to address issues such as security, maintainability, performance, and scalability. We require that the code be working correctly, to the best of the author's knowledge, before proceeding with a review.

• the code (however as silly as it is) is fully implemented and working

  Yes, but it didn't work as the OP intends.

• the OP asked several specific questions on the matters that concern them most, that are fully in the scope of this site

  Yes, all bar the last reason look like fine general questions to me.

• only one of these questions involves an "undesired behavior", in connection with the previously expressed concern about security, so the OP is not certain about that, hence asking the guidance.

  The OP is asking us to fix their code. They don't know how to fix something themselves, so came here for free help.

• This very last sentence has been carefully nitpicked from the question and used as a pretext for the closure. This is a hair splitting to the extent of mockery.

  If we let each and every 'fix my code' question on this site, then we'd soon turn into Stack Overflow. Where people dump their code and expect the community to do their all to fix every problem the user has, for free.

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We don't allow 'fix my code' questions as we'd soon stop reviewing code, and just fixing peoples code.

If the question didn't include that last question, I can't see why it'd be off-topic, but if we just remove it then it's likely the OP will be annoyed if we answer the question and don't address it.